I am going to die here. My name is Mindy Mason; I’m a student from the University. I volunteered for one experiment; it was to be for one day only. I want to go home now. I hear cries, screams, and shrieks in the night. Some of the voices sound as if they are coming from the pillow under my head, others as if from a radio behind a door in a far room, and yet others come from my dreams, thus layering my terror. I know Wendy has a knife; perhaps she has killed again. How can I stop her? 

When Kara Westfall was six years old, her mother was convicted of the worst of all crimes: Witchcraft. Years later, Kara and her little brother, Taff, are still shunned by the people of their village, who believe that nothing is more evil than magic…except, perhaps, the mysterious forest that covers nearly the entire island. It has many names, this place. Sometimes it is called the Dark Wood, or Sordyr's Realm. But mostly it's called the Thickety.

It is the Black Dawn, a time of environmental apocalypse, the earth wracked and dying. It is the Bright Day, a time long generations hence, when a peace has descended across the world. In each era, a child shall be chosen. Their task is to find a dark messiah known only as the Crowman. But is he our savior - or the final incarnation of evil?

Set on the Minnesota prairies in 1987, during a drought season that is fostering the demise of the family farms, the story features two intertwining narrators: a father searching for answers after his son commits a heinous murder, and a pastor's wife who has returned to the town for mysterious reasons of her own. A penetrating look at small-town America, reminiscent of Russell Banks' Sweet Hereafter or Affliction, driven by a powerful murder mystery, Little Wolves is a literary triumph.

The End. Those two little words can mean so much. But how will things end...and will it hurt? That's what we really want to know. Delve into the darkness and join us at the end of the world. From a blighted sky to an invasion from beyond, from untethered time to one person driven beyond the edge of sanity, from a child's game to an unseen apocalypse...it's all imagined here, and imagined darkly.

The Long List Anthology is designed to recognize the short works that were nominated for the 2015 Hugo Awards but did not make it into the top five short list for the final ballot. Thus, voted into the Hugo Award's long list of works - the top 15 works nominated for each category - were these nine short stories and three novelettes, now made available to a wider audience by award-winning narrators.

The zombie plague has been contained, right? Frank’s job is to patrol the fence that separates the living from the undead. It’s a boring job...at least it was until today. Has the true apocalypse finally arrived?

An alien plague. A sixteen-year-old girl. A fight to save the world. When a rare meteor shower unleashes a mind-altering infection, the people Alex loves begin to change. They’re smarter, faster, emotionless, and they have a plan. One that doesn’t include her. Guided by cryptic clues left behind by her deceased father, Alex follows a trail of increasingly shocking discoveries. Earth’s history isn’t what she learned in school, and a new hive mind threatens to rewrite the future.

Genetic modification has rendered Earth's croplands barren. Some survivors turned to science. Some turned to God. Some turned to the unthinkable.  

These 31 stories are fiction. Short and scary. Delivered to you in small, terrifying bursts, much the way you’d experience each individual room in a haunted-house attraction. They were specifically written to be enjoyed by both the not-too-young and old alike. Inside, you’ll find horror, drama, even a few laughs - and zombies. Zombies by the ton. Gnawing, gnashing, stumbling, and staring... Right. At. You. Waiting…for a bite-sized offering.

Three astronauts land on a remote asteroid where everyone is frozen in place in the midst of their activities. The only one that moves reveals himself as the caretaker who explains that they are in an exclusive cemetery where the deads' greatest wishes can come true.

On a sunny August morning in 1935, 13-year-old Sophia Gray finds her friend Rosemary wandering in the woods. Rosemary’s yellow dress is tattered and her eyes are vacant and glassy. She beckons to Sophia, desperate to show her something. In an abandoned cabin, beneath a tattered blanket, Sophia discovers Rosemary’s body. It was not Rosemary who led her there, but Rosemary’s ghost. Twenty years later, Sophia finds herself trapped in the sprawling Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane, in the hands of a malevolent doctor who preys on patients who exhibit paranormal abilities.

In the worlds of Steve Rasnic Tem, a father takes his son "fishing" in the deepest part of downtown, flayed rabbits visit a suburban back yard, a man is haunted by a surrealistic nightmare of crutches, a father is unable to rescue his son from a nightmare of trees, a bereaved man transforms memories of his wife into performance art, great moving cliffs of detritus randomly prowl the world, a seemingly pointless life finds final expression in bits of folded paper, a nuclear holocaust brings about a new mythology, an isolated man discovers he’s part of a terrifying community, and more.

Carla's 50th birthday is approaching when her world is turned upside down. Discovering her husband is having yet another affair and following her mother’s death, she is in need of an escape. Finding an envelope addressed to her mother’s estranged sister Josette in the south of France gives Carla the perfect plan. Seizing the moment, she packs her bags and heads to Antibes to seek out the enigma known as Tante Josette. But as the two women begin to forge a tentative relationship, family secrets start to unravel, forcing Carla to question her life as she has always known it.

Gavin Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the world. He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace. But Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live: Five years to achieve five impossible goals. But when Guile discovers he has a son, born in a far kingdom after the war that put him in power, he must decide how much he's willing to pay to protect a secret that could tear his world apart.